No, really, space IS big. Most fantasy games cover a kingdom, or even a whole world. Scifi adventures cover whole galaxies – maybe even the Universe. Throw in time travel as well, and that’s a lot to fill. Ever wonder why there’s a maximum of half a dozen locations on any given planet?

Because no author, filmmaker or designer can actually portray space as big as it is, and still have something we can relate to. So you get ‘this week’s planet is a jungle’ “this civilisation is Ancient Greece, but IIIIN SPAACE!”

As GMs, we have to walk a tightrope between not enough detail and too much. We have to include enough from the canon to make it the setting we chose to play in, while writing enough new to make the story our own.

Think for a minute about Star Wars. The middle unstated bit of the original trilogy – after Yavin, before Hoth. Vader hunts down the Resistance because they are a problem. So there are stories to be told elsewhere about other groups of intrepid resistance fighters getting up the Empire’s nose, enough that the Rebellion as a whole is more than just Luke, Leia, Wedge and a handful of extras. But because we’re playing Star Wars, we probably need to visit Tatooine and Hoth and Bespin and Coruscant – otherwise we could be anywhere (The problem of who gets to be the Jedi is a different argument, which I am not getting involved with) But we also need new places, not specified in the book. Places that aren’t in the films, because we were there – and if my personal experience of playing Star Wars is in any way indicative, probably blew up / made uninhabitable / sent to the Dark Side / set up franchises on – whichever seemed most destructive.at the time.

In order to tell fun stories, the GM needs a whole pile of people to meet, shoot at, betray, fall in love with, and rescue. Planets we can freely visit, come from or devastate. Locations to rob, blow up, control or maybe even just occasionally walk away from. (does anyone spot a theme to my scifi games?) So, we here at Artemis are writing a whole bunch of concepts for you to wrangle into your games.

Unlike the fantasy cards, every card is likely going to need tweaking to fit the setting you play in. Take Lt. Commander Martinn Jarvi. He’s an Imperial Officer, young for his rank, who believes in absolute galactic order, knows all the right people to get ahead, and has a remarkably quiet voice. He’s even prepared to sacrifice lives for the greater good.

A card of generation alpha-0.2 – come back soon for a more polished version.

In Star Wars, depending on when you play, he might be a Republic official, a Death Star officer, or a New Order officer. Other than that he can be pretty much dropped in as is.

For Star Trek, he almost certainly works for the Federation, but the liberal attitudes of that organisation don’t really fit him. Make him a Vulcan, however, and the desire for order and logic becomes much more explicable.

In Warhammer 40k, he could be an officer in the Imperial Navy, but he makes a much better impact as a Space Marine, stamping out heresy and rebellion. He’s a good fit for an Ultramarine, but he has to be demoted to Sergeant to fit the much smaller deployment model the Marines have. The quiet voice becomes firmer, and his physical description becomes more about his transhuman anatomy than “probably blond hair and blue eyes” He could also be an Inquisitor, where his stamping on everyone ‘just to make sure’ makes him a suitably fanatical antagonist.

Likewise other settings will need him to morph to reasonably exist. Some internal locations make more sense on planets than on space stations, or vice versa – perhaps the mine is on a nearby asteroid, and the ore is processed on the space station? We’re trying to make as few as possible that couldn’t exist on DS 9 or Babylon 5 – you might never have seen the Water Processing Plant, but logically there probably is one. And your contact wants to meet there – why?

Stories work because we, the protagonists, go to interesting places and meet fascinating people. And not always kill them. Unless they wear black hats. Morality in gaming? That’s a whole ‘nother question for a whole ‘nother day.

Music in character is usually either of the PCs making – often on the level of “bluff bluff bluff the stupid ogre”, or from the GM as part of scene setting. Your players may run the gamut of skills in music or lyrics, so other than saying “if you find a bard with any actual talent, encourage them” I’m going to focus on what you can influence as a GM..

Every book, talk and advice from older GMs on scene setting I have ever come across features the hint “use all the senses” Seeing as I’m the musician of the team. I figured I’d focus on sound.

Think about the ambient sound in any location. Is it busy and cosmopolitan, with many voices in multiple languages?. Is the only sound the rustling of the trees? Is there music, and if so, what? From the 1920s onwards, is there a radio or TV – or hyperview? Tuned to what channel?

For help with what kind of sounds are appropriate (technically, it’s called building a soundscape) imagine loading up one of the old fashioned computer RPGs – Ultima, Baldur’s Gate or Fable. When you walk into the pub, it plays “Jolly Pub Theme” when you walk into the woods, it plays “Spooky Forest Theme” What theme would your location need? Take a look amongst your DVD collection, at the extras. Do any of them have a piece on Sound in This Film – Men in Black 2 had an awesome piece about foley work – getting the right sound of footsteps or bodies falling. Or aliens exploding, but that was less transferable.

Musical styles invoked in description can bring a sense of place, or of pace. Think of walking into a nightclub. Is it a metal bar? Is it full of thumping techno? A jazz lounge? The picture in your head is likely very different in each case. Use that to evoke what kind of emotion your players feel – a biker might be tense in a pool hall that played classical, but much more at home if it played “Hits of the Seventies”

We can use music to colour in civilisations too. Use the pentatonic sound of Japanese music to shade in a place where elves hang out. Perhaps the islanders here play reggae? Deciding on the musical style of a culture can help you – and your players – get a handle on what kind of people these are – by paralleling them to the mundane culture that developed that kind of music.

In games

Over time, every GM acquires a repertoire of what I call ‘effects’. Things you can do to bring the game to life for your players. Music is one of the easiest of these, but I’m going to throw a few others into the mix too.

Voice time

I’m going to assume you can act a bit here. Think about the voices of your NPCs. Not everyone can pull off convincing accents – but if you can, consider making some characters have a Southern drawl, an Irish brogue, a Geordie twang. Even if the NPC has the same accent you do, think about tone. A reedy “when shall we three meet again?” has little in common with “I’m Brian Blessed”. Although you should take care not to annoy the neighbours, you could vary the volume – think Good Morning Vietnam’s “I’m in Artillery!” A character who whispers (or stage whispers) could make what he says seem more important.

Terminator tapping

So the party are investigating a haunted house. The ghost in question is an Iteration X construct – basically, a Terminator. So when the players are busy rolling to investigate the attic, I start to tap on the arm of my chair. Da Da Dum Da-Dum. Da Da Dum Da-Dum – until one of the players notices. Then stop. Then when they’re arguing about what they’ve found, again. Da Da Dum Da-Dum. Da Da Dum Da-Dum.. The same player looks at my fingers, tapping. “Guys, I’ve got a gut feeling this isn’t a human thing. Can robots leave ghosts?” Cue the one member of the party with the skill roll a Mage Lore check and leap to the thought that the pool of mercury wasn’t ectoplasm, it was body remains.

This trick only works if the musical theme is instantly recognisable – think the opening from Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Ode to Joy; or Land of Hope and Glory. Movie and TV music are good for this – Cantina Band, the Indiana Jones theme, X-files Instantly set the mood for cinematic games with the “title sequence” – this was very effectively done in a convention game with the Nerf Herder track for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game

Give a major NPC a ringtone that indicates something about him. Have a theme song for characters to indicate hidden influence in a scene – even if it never makes it out of your notes, it can help you remember the emotional backdrop – spooky, pensive, tense, lighthearted, comedy.

Phone box mobile

So, another convention game – Shadowrun this time. Contact Bob has two pieces of useful information for the party – one he will reveal for the asking, and one he thinks of later. So what would a good buddy do. Call you back.

A call from a friend became much more real when the GM’s mobile rang with “BOB” on the screen. The GM hands the phone unanswered to the player whose contact is Bob. “it’s for you” Player picks up the phone, answers, and “Bob” – with a similar drawl to the GM’s first personation – rattles off Information Point Two, and finishes up with ‘gotta go, think the cops are coming. See ya’

Achieved by priming a steward pal to slip out to the phone box in the hall, ‘any time after you get the text’. Turned out to be exactly right timing, but by more luck than judgement. Not really something you can pull off every week, but nice for a showpiece.

So, sound in RPGs.- Music, rhythms, voices, ringtones, Think about the tools you have – computer, phone, hands to click or clap, and use them to develop a soundscape that complements your gameworld.

This time of year is associated with ghosties and ghoulies and long leggedy beasties. But why? Apart from “it’s cold and dark and time for fires therefore stories”.

The derivation of Halloween from Samhain is a classic example of cultural evolution.

The exact details of the original festival are unclear, because the Celts wrote down very little – most of our sources are later and/or Roman, and thus it is akin to studying the Blitz using only present day memories or German sources. Still, we know many of the details, and as the festival never fully died out much more can be recovered from the later forms.

The world of the ancestors flows away from and towards our own, and comes close four times a year – at the beginning of each of the seasons. At Beltane – Mayday – the helpful spirits of the land cross over, and their blessings are welcomed with flowers and dance as summer begins. But at the beginning of Winter, darker spirits roam, and meeting one brings only curses. So the prudent householder would bribe the spirits with whatever he had excess of to ward off their ill will. The barley harvest falls in early September, so six weeks later, the first beer of the new year would just be ready, apples have also just been harvested and milk is less seasonal, so these became the traditional gifts. If one had a good harvest, one would share with neighbours, so that the spirits would see one as a good friend and be unable to harm the good man.

Young people would dress up as “spirits” and wander the village, claiming the bribes on behalf of the spirits. After all, are we not kin of the ancestors – and if they don’t turn up in person, don’t let it go to waste! The fact that the feast falls at the end of a period of very hard work – preparing for winter – probably contributes to this part of the celebration

Enter Christianity. The early church sought to adapt facets of the older faiths – it’s why Christmas falls so conveniently at Yule/Winter Solstice. The old spirits can’t possibly be good, therefore they must be devils. And anyone who feeds them must be witches. Of the old-crone-cursing variety, not our modern follower-of-a-nature-faith variety.

So, the Church co-opted the idea of reverence for the gone-before, and invented All Saints and All Souls – an opportunity for any local do-gooder to be remembered and prayed for, reducing time in Purgatory. They ditched the pagan aspect, and made the returning spirits evil. The sharing-with-neighbours part fit too, and became the Harvest Festival.

When the Americas were settled, Irish migrants took the old stories with them. As the USA developed its own culture as a blend of its constituent parts, the Irish merged with the French and Germanic witch and fairy traditions (for example, Oberon is first seen as an antagonist of Charlemagne) and All Hallows Eve became the time to mock the evil spirits by dressing as them. As sugar became a more prevalent product, giving the ‘ghosts’ a piece of sugar cane became easier than beer or milk. Sugar cane became chocolate, became any kind of Treat, to ward off the Tricks of the “fairy folk “.

Now Halloween means hordes of small children begging for candy, and teenagers demanding money in return for not putting fireworks through your door.. I’m not sure I like the evolution, so I celebrate this time of year by sharing the fruits of my labour. Here you go, neighbour! Have a whole lot of thinking.

So what?

If your fantasy culture has been around for a while – centuries or millennia – it has likely evolved in a similar fashion. There will be those who keep fast to some version of ‘the old ways’ and some who have applied them in new ways. If a nation has been conquered, colonised or even conquered others, the newcomers bring new customs and new gods, and few conquerors allowed the natives to worship unhindered. Even mundane things like introducing a new crop can reflect in the spiritual life of a people. According to a Papal Bull, capybara are officially fish (despite being rodents) so Catholics can eat them on Fridays.

Think about how the new gods and the old interact. Do you follow the Ice and Fire model of “some worship one set, some the other, mostly they coexist, and that’s fine”

The Roman model of “Zeus? You mean Jupiter. Sulis? Oh, you mean Athena.”

The Christian model of “Our god is the only god and all others are evil”

Or even the Mongol model “there are many gods, and yours are ok, as long as you don’t try to convert us”

When languages merge, you get dialects and creoles. When cultures collide, you get history. And what is history but another branch of storytelling?

The setting material we write is not intended to be a joined up world – we’ve always written with an eye to modifying already existing worlds, whether published or homebrew. Between Jigsaw and Concept Cards, we’ve written enough that there could be a whole campaign setting in there – but that’s not their purpose.1)Using them in lieu of a structured campaign setting on the other hand is a perfectly reasonable option – it’s simply that each person doing so will end up with a different world

So Jigsaw Fantasy provides “Jigsaw Links” to help with this. How best can you use the Links in the appendix of each piece? In the Floating City, we describe the worship of Uzhangya, Goddess of the Sea. But she’s really specific – and whatever world you play, there will almost certainly be a deity of the sea already. So Uzhangya could be another sea-deity, or an aspect of an existing one, or you could swap her out with one of her fellow deities.

Over the last year, between the Mythic Monday blogs, Death Rites Jigsaw piece, and elements from The Floating City; Emberek Tribes 1)coming soon on Kickstarter and more, we’ve sketched out details from dozens of cultures. What use are they? How do they fit into your stories?

Somewhere to visit – most adventurers are wanderers. Each week a new planet – ahem, location. Where are we today? What strange customs do the locals follow, and what kind of trouble will the heroes get into by not observing them? Is today the feast of the God of Silence, and the travellers get no replies to their queries for bed and board? Are men forbidden from speaking to anyone outside their family? Are all the undead in the fields not a plague but a workforce?

Origin stories – every hero needs one. Why become an adventurer – no home, probably no family, no community, no job security. Robbing tombs and killing vermin isn’t high up the desirable career choices of anyone. Is your hero an outcast? Seeking revenge? Desperate?

Is the reason Our Hero left home to do with the customs common at home – assuming home still exists at all. Think of Atalanta, who in at least some versions is left on a mountainside to die as an infant, because her father wanted a boy. We gave you the passengers on the Elkeru river – dead to their homeland, even if they survive the voyage.

The environment is nature trying to make your life interesting. Or difficult, whichever you prefer.

Unless your entire travel segment goes “it takes three weeks, and you arrive in the next city”, you are going to need something about where you are travelling through. Even in the city, the local environment has an effect – on architecture, on clothing, even on the demeanor of the inhabitants. Compare Alexandria with Venice with Oslo. The ancient versions, not the skyscraper forests. Any era before air conditioning and central heating, where you live affects you.

But the environment is particularly relevant to those who leave the city and explore the wildernesses – notably adventurers. Hacking through a forest, isn’t quite the same as punting through a swamp, sailing a boiling sea, or trekking through the desert.

Wetlands in Cape May, New Jersey, USA. View of Fishing Creek Marsh with Miami Beach, New Jersey on the left. from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library

Wetlands

When we write faraway magical places, cultures, and creatures we are inspired by the real world. Nothing you could make up is half as weird as Mother Nature already has. If you plan to make any environment a part of your storytelling, you could do worse than go watch a couple of nature documentaries. Look what nature does, and then fantasy-fy it a little. All the creatures in the Sivatag Desert or the Floating City are inspired by real creatures, even if those inspirations are taken in unusual and fantastical directions.

That’s what you get for having a biologist on the team, who asks questions like “what are the nesting habits of kraken?” or “what are the evolutionary environmental pressures of sleeping on gold?”

Where the adventure is set matters. How you get there is part of the story.

So today, to get to the Next Place, your party have to travel through a swamp. Apart from getting their boots wet, what kind of effects does this have on your adventure? Why not just avoid describing the landscape?

Because yet another forest is boring. Because investigating a different ecosystem at the very least provides for different monsters to fight. Because just getting from A to B becomes a challenge – a reason to have the Survival skill, a reason to hire a native guide. Because the real world is diverse and beautiful and bizarre, and therefore the fantasy worlds we build really should be even more so.

Original Dungeons and Dragons made it easy to tell which elves are the Evil ones – they’re the Drow, the ones with the coal black skin. Whilst this might have been more socially acceptable in the 1970’s when the first edition was published, most modern gamers tend to shy away from that specific form – even those who are otherwise happy to have “evil races” be easily distinguished by their form.

It might seem useful to backtrack the appearance of elves from DnD back to Middle-Earth, and so to the mythic originals from which Tolkien drew his inspiration. Unfortunately it’s not. The Norse sagas have two kind of ‘elf’ – the lios-alfar, which are your basic elves, and the svart-alfar, which are dwarves. Arguably the Vana might be the inspiration for the High Elves, but the distinction between Quenya and Sindarian is largely linguistic rather than genetic, and the Vana are more close kin to the Aesir (both are Norse gods) than the Alfar (who are just elves), so I’m guessing not so much.

One might expect to struggle to find a Z, but if one heads to the Orient, one finds a plethora of deities which we transliterate with a Z.

The Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy has a thousand servants – many of whom are deified humans – so their names resemble those of mortals. From General Zhao Yun, to Emperor Zi Ying, to Philosopher Zheng Xuan – anyone of sufficient greatness can claim a place in the Jade Court of Heaven.

This proliferation does lead to over specialisation – many new deities are the Tut-ti, whose realm is small – particular villages, streets, or even individual houses. Greater souls (particularly those of Emperors) can govern larger realms – Yu the great, founder of the Xia dynasty is a water deity, and protector of ships at sea.

I’ve chosen a story from the most eccentric of the Eight Immortals of the Taoist pantheon. As usual, I’ve switched about details to read better, and here I’ve introduced an element from a different story.

Story of the Soul

Zhang was a an alchemist experimenter, and a maker of wines.One day, after drinking a little too much of his own stock, he took a walk into the mountains, where he found a delicious looking mushroom. It was as big as his own head, and Zhang took it and ate it all up, licking all the the tasty juices.from his fingers

Now, wandering in mountains whilst drunk is dangerous, and sure enough, Zhang fell. He tumbled down the mountain. He should have died from such a fall, and when he landed at the bottom, he realised he had consumed one of the Mushrooms of Immortality.

With more time to think about everything, Zhang left his experiments. He took to wandering the countryside on a paper donkey, which he had animated by magic. This donkey could take him a thousand miles a day, and needed no food, At the end of the day, Zhang folded his donkey neatly into his pocket

The Emperor, on hearing of the wise teachings of this philosopher, summoned him to Luoyang, to be the chief of the Imperial Academy. The necromancer Ye Fashan, whose opinion was valued at court, came to the Emperor and warned against the appointment.

“Why, who is this Zhang Guolao, that I should not reward his wisdom”

“If I were to reveal the truth to Your Majesty, I would drop down dead of the malice of him” said the cunning necromancer.

“I command you to tell me!” said the Emperor

So the necromancer proclaimed Zhang to be a white bat, spun out of Chaos. And as he had said, such a truth was not for mortal lips, and he fell down dead. The Emperor, being not quite mortal himself, knew that this meant that Zhang was a member of the Celestial Bureaucracy. So the Emperor went to Zhang and begged forgiveness for Ye. And Zhang came to the court, and poured water over Ye’s corpse, which rose to life again.

Soon after, Zhang fell ill and returned to his home on Zhongtiao Mountain. He remained still for three days, and his followers built a tomb for him. But on the anniversary of his seeming death, his tomb was opened for the people to pay homage to him, but the body had gone. No one knows where he went, but there have ever since been stories in that area, of folk who met the great philosopher, and benefited from his wisdom.

In your Games and Stories.

The Jade Court is intensely political, and an ideal backdrop for stories where quid-pro-quo is the order of the day.The various small goods, philosophers and courtiers are all trying to progress through the Hierarchy, and might well trade favours with protagonists. Or antagonists, for that matter.

Because of the profusion of small gods in the Bureaucracy, Zhang is marked as “patron of the elderly”. This tells us something about Chinese society – that they consider the aged to be worth protecting. One has to wonder what other specialists the Jade Court harbours – and what counterparts wander the Thousand Hells.

Zhang isn’t terribly powerful on his own, and is unlikely to feature in shrines or temples. His tomb might be intriguing to explore – how did he pull off the vanishing trick? – but would be unlikely to be full of easily looted treasure. Likewise, as a spell-granter, Zhang is likely to need to borrow from other bureaucrats – so would likely favour a spell of trade. Best example is Empire LRP’s Scales of Ephisis – Put something in the box, receive something of equal value, for a given idea of value.

Outro

So that’s twenty-six gods, and a festival. If your clerical character can’t find someone to follow, you’re just going to have to write your own god. Or pantheon. And a world for them to inhabit. We’re hoping to write a book, with just such world-building help – with a bit more anthropological viewpoint, where here we’ve concentration on story-building.

I’ve enjoyed sharing the stories of these gods with you, but now I’m going to hand off the blog to Amy, who plans to provide you with more monsters than you could shake a really big stick at. Do we make monster-shaking sticks, Boss?

Statue of Ogun shrine at the Sacred Grove Of Oshun – Photo by Yeniajayiii

Strictly, Yoruban is the name for the people, not the faith, but I’m stretching to it in order to show an interesting worldview that would otherwise be missed. We’ve looked exclusively at polytheism, and assumed for storytelling purposes that gods are immanent and not omnipotent, omnicognizant nor omnipresent. A god that does not intervene makes for a dull character; a god that can solve every problem without effort makes for a dull story.

The Yoruba worldview has a single powerful god, whom they call Olodumare. But this god is distant, and works mainly through proxies – the Orishas. There are dozens of these, each with their own specialisation. They often include the ancestors of the supplicant, and are not supplanted by conquest – the new orishas supplemented the old ones. Each babalawo (priest) would have his own array of favoured spirits.

As people from sub-saharan Africa were exported in the slave trade, they took their beliefs with them, and syncretised them with the dominant Catholic faith. After all, the Christians were powerful – did it not follow that their spirits were powerful too? The daughter faiths found in the New World are often incorrectly described as voodoo; more accurately Santeria, Candomble, or Voudoun – dependant on both the African root and the Christian variant.

Be clear, none of these faiths are demon-worship, any more than a faith in Odin or Apollo or Raijin. The orishas – be they locally referred to as ancestors, loa or saints – may require some kind of sacrifice to entice their blessing, but the black cockerel whose blood is spilt over the altar is no more devilish than the calf which the priests of Zeus would sacrifice, and use for divination. The desires and motivations of these spirits run the whole gamut of human experience, so some could be viewed as evil – but this is judged in the actions of individuals, and does not reflect on the faith as a whole.

Because many of the best stories have been lost or exist only in fragmentary form, this tale is more fiction than usual.

Story of the Pantheon

Olodumare looked across the face of the waters, and saw that this place was rich for the making of life. So he conceived in his thought and whistled three of the orishas to come swim in the sea

Obatala the Maker took a mollusc shell and swam to the bottom of the ocean and dug out a piece of the sea floor. When he brought it to the surface, Shango the Flame breathed his fire on it and cooked it, so that it did not dissolve as sand, but came to be rock. Then Elegua the Walker took his big feet and walked over the new land, and made hills and valleys with his walking. And so the world grew.

But all this land was barren. So the first three orishas whistled for help. Yemoja of the Water took her littlest finger, and began to poke holes in the land. Where she worked, sweet springs came to be. And Oya the Wind blew across the land and the seeds that were hidden came into view, and began to sprout. And so the world grew.

Oshun the beautiful took some of the plants and lent them her grace, that they might move of themselves, and so all animals came to be. And Shango gave some of them fierceness that they might be hunters, and Oya gave some swiftness that they might be prey. And so the world grew.

Eshu the Trickster was sad, because nowhere in this paradise was there room for his mischief. So he went here and there and took a little mud for flesh and a little wood for bones, and he made himself manikins. And he animated them like puppets to dance for him.

When the other orishas saw the things Eshu had made they were worried for their creation, that Eshu’s puppets would spoil it.

Olodumare said that all things have the place in this world, and that these men should govern and guard the world, and someday become orishas too. So each of the orishas gave the puppets gifts, to help them be the best guardians.

Shango gave them warm blood, and the desire to make their world warm and safe.

Yemoja made them virile and fertile and gave them a desire to mate.

Oya gave them swiftness and a desire to look always elsewhere – to the horizons, and up at the stars

And Ogoun gave them the power of making – in wood and metal – and the desire to transform that which they saw as not good, and improve the world.

Olodumare smiled on all these things, and gave them his blessing, that they might grow and develop of their own accord. And Olodumare saw that the making went well, and left the world in the care of the Orishas

And so the world grew, and grows yet. And wise men know that this world is a gift, and that we were meant to guard and govern it, not to ruin it.

In your games and stories

One aspect that distinguishes orishas from other types of spirit or deity is their habit of possessing worshippers. Whilst this can make for a powerful story device, it needs to be otherworldly and alien, otherwise the impact of being so directly touched by the supernatural is lost in the mist. Does the mount know what the spirit does in his body? Can he direct the spirit at all?

More than any of the other faiths we have examined, followers of the Sub Saharan and Diaspora faiths are likely to call upon multiple orishas (loas, saints) for aid. Spells to control fertility might implore Oshun for aid, whilst divinations call upon Orunmila. Pick spells first, and then decide which spirit grants that spell, and what they require in exchange. Perhaps some only desire song or dance, or a promise of regular attendance at a worship ceremony. Others may require a chicken, a dollar, or some other sacrifice.

Given that following these faiths was for many years illegal (and still is in some places), a temple would either be hidden in wilderness, or constructed and deconstructed for each faith ceremony. Either way, the adherents are unlikely to view the intrusion of a treasure-seeking adventuring party in anything other than a hostile light. If the punishment for taking part in such a faith is harsh, the faithful have little to lose by fighting the intruders. Protagonists would be better served cautiously courting such congregations if they have need of their help.